Unit Study on The Hobbit: Lesson 5 “Over Hill & Under Hill” and “Riddles in the Dark”

In Chapter 4, the dwarves, Bilbo, and Gandalf take refuge in what appeared to be an unoccupied cave during a horrific thunderstorm. They were caught off guard while they were dozing and the goblins captured everyone except Gandalf.

To begin, the boys watched an episode of Storm Chasers on Netflix. (Even though this show is primarily about tornadoes, growing up in Oklahoma I know that there is often – but not always – thunder and lighting before a tornado.) After the show, I read about thunderstorms from our book, “Children’s Weather Encyclopedia“.

Then we did a couple of science experiments. Our first one was a bust. We tried a lightning experiment where you rub a comb on wool and touch it to metal. Nothing. Then we tried rubbing the comb against our hair and touching it to metal. Nothing. Then we tried rubbing a balloon against our hair and touching metal. Nothing.

This was about our tenth attempt after tweaking it several different ways:

Then our thunder experiment:

How to Write a Riddle:

Bilbo and Gollum go back and forth with riddles in the cave. Gollum has promised to show Bilbo the way out if he can stump him. Bilbo wins but only barely and narrowly escapes Gollum in the end.

We read how to write a riddle from here. Then each of the boys wrote their own riddle with some guidance from me. Finally, they called dad and asked him the riddle. He was able to guess Zach and Chris’ but was stumped by Justin’s riddle.

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2 Comments

Sharon Hock
on November 14, 2012 at 2:09 pm

I have a thought. Perhaps you want to try the lightning experiment again when the humidity is low. A higher humidity level can retard the static electricity. I loved the riddles, I missed the third one also as I thought it was cake. Tell Chris I got his letter and will be writing back soon.

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Foundations:

The big boys have daily work that is not reflected in my weekly homeschool posts. Their foundational work has changed over the years in relation to where they are developmentally. Currently, the big boys do the following in the morning before their daily themed work after lunch:
Silent reading, Math (Aleks), Writing Skills, and Lumosity (neuroplasticity) - and audiobooks in the evenings